The Lost Child (30 page)

I've been looking for you for so long.

And now you've found me?

In a way. I hope so. Yes.

She gives me a long look.

I do wish I knew who you were, she says again. I feel as if I know you. But why?

I smile.

I feel just the same. I feel like that too.

About me?

Yes. About you.

She coughs again. A slow racking cough. This time she pulls a small grey rag from her sleeve, wipes her mouth.

Are you OK?

Oh yes, thank you, I'm so much better than I was.

You've been very ill?

Not so ill. I'm definitely mending now. Papa says I am.

That's good. I'm glad you're better.

Silence for a moment or two. I'm not sure how hard I want to push her.

Do you mind telling me about the walk in the woods?

She turns to look at me with grey amused eyes. Eyes as grey as the eyes of my boy. Eyes that can go somewhere else in two seconds flat. Eyes that widen.

The walk in the woods? With Robert? You even know about that? That part is in your book, too?

And who's Mr Brown and why did Mrs Coulcher say you were piqued? Piqued at what?

Ah! Jane Coulcher! Now I understand. Is that where all this ridiculous information's coming from?

She's a source.

A source. Hmm. Not a reliable one, though.

No?

That woman. I don't want to say too much, but she has been no friend to Mama. You know her?

Not really. But one of her letters happened to survive - I think Florence Suckling knew her.

Florence Suckling? I don't know the name. Is she a relative of Robert's, then?

She's - it doesn't matter. Look, in the woods. What happened?

A sly little smile.

What do you think happened?

He kissed you?

She looks away quickly, bites her lip.

I'm sorry, I tell her. But it's so hard for me to know. I mean I really can't even begin to guess how things were in your time.

She frowns at me as if she doesn't understand.

Do you love him? I say then.

A long pause.

Love him? she says, and her voice is suddenly shy. I don't know. I don't exactly know what love is. Oh, I know what people say. Sophy and Groome, for instance, they love each other. You can see it in his eyes, and sometimes when he leaves, poor Soph weeps as if her heart is breaking. But I don't weep about Robert. He would never make me weep. Though I sometimes do wonder if I have a heart to break -

You have a heart, I tell her.

She smiles and hesitates again.

But Robert and I, we'll walk for hours and we'll talk and you've no idea the things he knows. Terrible things and wonderful things. Things you wouldn't believe. And we talk as If we just can't stop. And when he goes all I can think of is all the things I meant to ask him and didn't. So many things I just forgot to say!

I smile at her and she blushes slightly. Colour creeping over her face from her neck.

Not only that, but everything I tell him he understands. I never have to explain a thing. It's like there's this easy mood between us all the time. He makes me feel so - listened to. And I don't know what love is, Julie, but when he talks to me, when we've been walking and talking a while, then I'll look up and suddenly the whole world looks different.

In what way different?

It's like - everything's more beautiful, louder, more wide awake, all the colours undiluted!

I look at her face, lit up with her little speech.

That's the only way I can really describe it, she says, suddenly self-conscious, making a face.

I know what you're talking about, I tell her. And I think I would call that love.

She looks at me doubtfully and then she smiles.

You would?

I think so, yes.

I look at her now - the rush of her blood showing through the skin. The palest blonde hair looping over her ear. I can't take my eyes off her. I realise I don't want this to be over. I don't want her to go. I don't want to lose you, Mary. Please don't go.

I'm so sorry, I hear myself tell her, and she looks surprised.

Sorry for what?

Never mind. It doesn't matter.

She looks at the cool church floor. She sighs to herself but she looks happy. She's thinking about Robert. She does not look at me.

I'm really sorry, by the way, she says. About your lad.

I look at her in surprise.
My lad.

How did you know? I ask her, more out of curiosity than anything.

She brings her face closer to mine. I can smell the sticky heat of her skin, a faint hot smell of something a bit like fever.

I've been in your head so long, she says, I think I probably know everything.

OK, I say, unsure whether this makes any sense.

Do you think you'll get him back? she asks me then.

I think for a moment.

I don't know, I say truthfully. What do you think?

She shrugs.

I think there's still a lot of time.

You think so?

Oh yes. There's time. He's young. He has time. He has all the time in the world.

I shut my eyes.

Does he?

You don't believe that?

I don't know, I tell her, it's always hard, isn't it - to know about time.

What about it?

I twist the tissue in my fingers.

How much of it you've got. I mean, it's easy not to think about it when you have a lot of it. But once there's less -

She turns and fixes her grey eyes on me. Solemn grey eyes, full of questions, full of possibility. Eyes so like the eyes of my boy. She takes my other hand, the one without the tissue.

Your hands are so warm, she says. It feels like a miracle.

I smile.
A miracle.
A miracle of warmth, of life. She twists my wedding ring round the way my daughter would.

And yours are so cold, I tell her, but she doesn't seem to hear me.

She's thinking hard, listening for something. A voice in her head?

He'll come back, she says, I just know he will.

Oh Mary. No one knows anything, I tell her. I know you mean well and you're only saying that to be kind, but I'm afraid I've stopped listening when people say those things. You can't know. No one can.

She looks at me, suddenly fierce.

Ah, but it's not true - you forget. People do know things. The way you know about me.

I know about her.

It's true, I agree, I do. I know.

What do you know?

She looks right into my eyes and I look at her and then I have to look away.

Tell me what you know, she says.

And straight away I start to see what I didn't see before: how different the church looks. How the shadows have grown deeper and darker, how the floor is rougher, the pew we're sitting in much lighter and smaller, small leather prayer books on the shelf Lilies haunting the air.

I glance at the Yelloly plaques. And Of course, they're gone. No longer there. Not yet there.

She's still holding my hand and her own hand is warm now. I can feel the life beating through it, the hope.

Mary?

Yes?

What month is it?

She stares at me, puzzled.

You don't know what month it is?

Is it May?

She smiles.

Of course it's May.

May of what year?

She laughs as if I'm testing her.

1837!

You're twenty?

That's right. But in December I shall be twenty-one.

The air smells shrill and green too, of the beginning of life and the end of summer, the end of the day and the beginning of evening. The beginning, middle and end of this journey. The edge of the sky behind the church is bright orange. Shepherd's delight. A perfect evening. Tomorrow will be another lovely day.

As I walk back down the gravel, the man raises a hand and waves to me, and I lift my hand and wave back.

And even though you don't know it yet, one day you are buried in the dark, damp earth and another day I am born and then just three seconds after that I am eighteen, may be nineteen, walking through the streets of an Italian town wearing a bright tomato-red sundress, the sun on my back. I remember the sundress. What happens to the sundress? And I am crying and then laughing and then I am twenty-one, the same age you were when you died, except that I'm alive, so intent on being alive - and this is the last time in my life that I will ever remember being alone.

Because not so many years after this - a quick pleat of years, a stretch of time so elastic you can barely feel it - I will meet someone and, not long after this, we'll have a child and we'll bring him home from the hospital and, just as I always knew would happen, his father will run me a bath and I will climb into it so very gratefully while he takes our son into the bedroom.

Our boy. That's what we call him. From that very first moment, even though he has a name, that's what he is.

Our boy.

Is he OK? I'll call from the bathroom, even though I know the answer. Is the boy OK?

He's fine. The boy's just fine. You relax, take your time. Stay in the bath as long as you like.

And I will. I will take my time. I will never know quite how to relax, but certainly I will take my time.

It's hard to know about time, but still I will lie in that bath, just as you lie in the dark earth, and it will seem like no time at all has elapsed between the Italian street and this deep warm bath. No time at all between one moment and the next. And if that is true, if time can stretch and stretch, or else snap back in an instant, then surely death can't be anything very important?

I'll lie there m that warm bath for a long time on that February afternoon - I February 1989 - feeling so happy and so complete.

And when I get out, carefully because I'm still stitched and sore, and the bath water drains out into the frosty air, I'll pad into the bedroom wrapped in my towel, the TV on, cartoon-hero music playing, and I'll see them both there, asleep in the armchair in front of
Mighty Mouse.

A long-haired, soft-faced boy in a woollen jumper, mouth open, fast asleep. And a warm-haired, tiny-fisted one lodged in the crook of his arm.

Well, sometimes it's night but usually it's more like day. But we always say yes. Just for the moment, anyway. We're not quite sure whether it's the right thing to do - some would say yes, some would say no - but, because there really are no concrete answers, for now we're doing it. We're doing it because right now we can't really manage to do anything else.

And he's here now as I write this, asleep upstairs, arms and legs thrown out of the duvet, mouth open, poor old Kitty curled against his leg, satisfaction spilling out of her face.

I thought I would never see him asleep again, but I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things. may be the best we can hope for in this unknowable, unguessable life is that we might turn out to be wrong. That the things we dreaded might not happen, or not as badly anyway. That those we thought we'd set our hearts on might turn out not to matter very much.

I used to think that love was the solution to everything, but I was wrong about that too. It's just the most irresistible part of the problem.

It makes no difference that I found her, that I know where she is. It makes no difference that I wrote this book, or that you chose to read it. I never met her, and neither will you, we never will.

The conversation in All Saints Church never happened, just like so many things that will never happen, however much you might want them to. And nothing I do or think or feel can bring that young girl back to life, and it took a while for me to be able to put up with that idea, but I know it now and I think I can live with it. I've learned to live with so many other difficult things.

I'll tell you one thing that did happen, though, that has happened, that will happen.

But we don't know any of this yet. All we know is that the birds are calling outside and particles of dust are drifting in these bright, warm shafts of evening light and we think we might love each other and our bodies are about to collide and in a few moments, in this bed, you will turn to me and then, in one of the long moments that follow, he will begin to exist. Our boy.

But that hasn't happened yet and right now this moment, so full of possibility, is all we have.

AFTERWORD

TWO MONTHS AFTER I finish writing this book, I pick my boy up in the pouring rain. I haven't seen him for weeks - he has no phone and he won't give me the address of his Peckham bedsit.

We go to a cafe, where he orders steak and fries and I order peppermint tea. I try not to snatch too many glances at his face. He looks OK, not as thin as last time and his hair has grown long and curly. He has his guitar wrapped in a bin bag to keep it dry.

I tell him how good it is to see him. He shrugs. I tell him I've got something to show him.

Remember that book - the one I started writing ages ago, about the girl who lived two hundred years ago?

Mary Yelloly?

I didn't think you'd remember the name. Well, I started finding out about her and it was just that her story was so unrelentingly sad. And all of this stuff with you - it was all happening at exactly the same time. And one day I suppose I just ground to a halt. I couldn't do it. And then I realised: I could only write truthfully about Mary if I wrote about what was going on with you as well.

He wipes a chip through ketchup and gives me a weary look.

So - what? My whole life story's in this fucking book?

It's not quite like that, I say, pulling out the manuscript. But please, I really do need you to read it, tell me what you feel about it. Don't worry, it's not so much about you - or at least it is - but it's more about me really. A mother's story. And I know you're not going to like everything in it. In fact there's quite a lot you might not like. But please, please try and remember that it's been written with nothing but love.

He sighs, eats another chip.

It's a book about how much I love you, I tell him again, though I realise you may not choose to see it quite like that.

It's so lovely to see you two days running, I tell him truthfully. I should write books about you more often.

He almost smiles.

Yeah, well, Mother dearest, you've been very clever with this so-called book.

But he goes on to tell me there are some things he objects to.

Really? Like what?

Well, for a start, this bit about selling my brother skunk. I never gave him skunk. Hash, yes. Big difference. And you say I encouraged him to get stoned on the way home from school, but that's not true. I was actually trying to stop him.

By giving him hash when he was only thirteen?

Yes! To prevent him having skunk!

Ah.

And another thing: when we're discussing the termination thing, you have me just sitting and fiddling with my Xbox as if I didn't give a fuck. And yet I remember sitting down in the sitting room with you and Dad and having a really serious conversation about it, both of you going on at me.

Really?

Definitely!

OK, I say. I'm sorry. I'll look at it. I can easily adjust it.

He turns the pages. He's marked up the bits he's unhappy with. So few bits. I'm amazed at how many pages have no marks on at all.

At one point, he shakes his head.

You and your short, snappy little sentences, he says. I know what you're doing, you know.

It's how I write.

Yeah, yeah. And then this bit, the bit where you and Dad throw me out for the last time and you have me saying
I'll take a knife and stab you through the heart.

You don't remember saying that?

Fuck's sake! If I said it, I wouldn't have meant it!

I know that, I say slowly. It's not that I think you'd have done it. But you must admit it was a pretty aggressive thing to say.

He looks at me for a moment with his clear grey eyes, but he says nothing.

And then, when you say I finally dropped out of school, you very conveniently omit to mention that I'd already got myself on to the course at Goldsmith's.

I think about this.

That's true, I say, I'm sorry, I don't know why I didn't say that. And how is it, by the way? Are you still going?

He hesitates.

There've been some attendance issues, he says.

You haven't been going?

I'm going. But if I miss a single session now, they'll kick me out.

You'd be mad to give up on all that work, I tell him. Just stay and do the exam, for goodness' sake.

What d'you think I'm doing?!

He looks back down at the manuscript.

To be absolutely honest, he says carefully, I wasn't all that interested in the stuff about the Mary Yelloly person.

Well, that's understandable.

I'm not saying it's bad, necessarily. But may be you have to be pushing fifty and female.

Thanks a lot!

But the bit in the church, at the end. I did think that was pretty good.

You did? I feel myself flush with pleasure. You really liked that bit?

He nods, takes a forkful of pasta. Moments pass. I realise I don't want this dinner to end.

But if you want to know, he says softly and he doesn't look at me now. You're right: it was then.

What was then?

When I started smoking.

You mean-

You and Dad. All those evenings. I'd be in bed holding Kitty and just watching this little dot on the wall while I listened to you two arguing.

My heart jumps.

Was it so many evenings? (In my head those bad months have shrivelled to something small and dark and tight.)

The first time I ever smoked a joint alone - I felt so guilty.

oh, darling.

He swallows and I think, He's still here, the exact same boy. The shape of his mouth when he was five years old. What did we do to him?

I'm so very sorry, I tell him slowly. We had no idea. We were so wrapped up in our own problems. We were idiots.

Yeah. You were.

I love you so much. We both love you so much.

Yeah, well.

I was dreading giving it to you, I tell him. But you see, I had to write it. It was just the only thing I could possibly write.

I know that, he says quietly. I understand about writing.

Well, you're good, I tell him, to understand that.

He says nothing, lightly strums his guitar.

But I've been very merciful, you know, he says as we walk past Co-op Funerals, Argos and Super drug, litter blowing against our legs.

I know you have, I say, I know.

So don't you go thinking I approve of what you've done.

OK, I say, and I steal a glance at his face, which, despite his words, is warm, amused even. For a moment, I feel like the child.

When we turn into our road, he perches on a car bonnet and asks to play me a song he's written. It's rough, forlorn, full of passion. When he plays, his face changes and he turns into someone else, someone I don't really know.

I stand there listening to the song. People walk past. I don't know who they think we are or what they think we're doing. The sky has almost lost its light and I can smell cooking and exhaust. The boy who lives across the road - a boy who only a year or so ago was at school with him and is at university somewhere now - sticks his head out of the window, grinning.

Hey, man! I thought it was you! What you up to, then?

Just playin' a song to my mum.

Cool! You OK?

Yeah. You?

Yeah. Good to see you, man.

We walk on down the road towards our house. I ask If he'll come in for a bit. He says he won't.

But you could drive me to Brixton.

Where are you going?

The Academy. Gotta meet some people.

So I run into the house to grab my cardigan and car keys and, when his father hears that our boy is outside, he comes out to say hello.

The boy is sitting on the bonnet of our car, curly head bent, playing chords. He looks up slowly when his father approaches.

Hello, boy.

Huh.

How's things?

OK. (The smallest flicker of a smile.)

One I wrote about you.

So I pull in on Brixton High Road and put on the flashers. Close my eyes as his music fills the car. I catch phrases: . . .
waiting for your hand . . . as daylight breaks over my shy bones . . . I've made mistakes . . . lonely in the rain.
Again, that unknown young man's face.

And my tears start to fall, but it doesn't matter because he's not looking at me, he's looking somewhere else - beyond, apart. The car rocks every time a heavy lorry shudders past. He's singing about me but he's gone somewhere else, somewhere I can't go.

When he's finished, he still doesn't look at me. I can't really speak. My heart hurting. Salt in my mouth.

It's so beautiful, I croak. Thank you.

He smiles to himself, a wobbly little smile.

I knew you'd cry, he says. And he opens the car door and, guitar under his arm, he's gone.